


I know someone

by resistate



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Alcohol, CTNSC19, F/F, Friendship, Light Angst, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 23:40:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17477150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resistate/pseuds/resistate
Summary: ‘Are you—’ starts Kaitlyn.‘A little,’ Tessa says quickly. ‘Is that—is that okay?’‘Yeah,’ says Kaitlyn, quickly.





	I know someone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [softswans](https://archiveofourown.org/users/softswans/gifts).



> For úna, for her birthday <3
> 
> Thank you to @/comewhatmoir and @/weavirtue for having a look at this <3

//

Tessa calls the night before the free dance at Nationals. It’s forty minutes into the hour before bed Kaitlyn tries to set aside for herself before a competition. It’s probably not a coincidence, because nothing Tessa does is a coincidence. She picks up on the second ring.

‘You and Andrew were amazing today,’ Tessa says. Her voice warm and Kaitlyn wonders if that’s just the edge of a rasp she hears. She wonders if Tessa’s been outside in the cold today.

‘Thanks,’ says Kaitlyn. ‘We felt amazing.’

Hours later she’s yet to come down from the high of the rhythm dance. She’s tired; she aches, but nothing can take away from today. Performing their Libertango program had been like nothing else under the sun. She’s not discounting their hard work; she would never do that, but today had felt like someone had turned her very gently inside out, so that all her emotions were right there for everyone to see, and then set her back down on the ice to dance. Today had felt that effortless.

Tessa doesn’t say anything. Kaitlyn holds her phone to her ear and listens to Tessa’s soft, raspy breaths. She pushes her shoulders back and her chin forward, stretching, then settles into the stiff hotel armchair.

‘Do you miss it?’ Kaitlyn asks. She means Nationals, but Tessa’s answer is immediate and evasive. 

‘I miss you.’

The ache in Tessa’s words hits her square in the chest. She breathes through it, waiting.

‘I just wanted to hear your voice,’ Tessa says, finally.

Her words are blurred a little around the edges, like she might have had a glass of wine before she called.

‘Are you—’ starts Kaitlyn.

‘A little,’ Tessa says quickly. ‘Is that—is that okay?’

‘Yeah,’ says Kaitlyn, quickly.

She tucks her bookmark into the biography she hasn’t really been reading and sets it on the table next to the armchair. Earlier she’d draped the extra blanket from the end of the bed around her shoulders for warmth and she pulls it closer around herself now.

‘I’m sorry we couldn’t make it work out when you were in New York,’ Kaitlyn says. Tessa had been down the week before for a couple of days for work, and they’d planned to get together for lunch or dinner or something, but in the end there just hadn’t been any time when they both had been free.

‘It’s not your fault,’ Tessa says.

It is, though. Kaitlyn could have pushed harder against the give in her own schedule, but part of her hadn’t wanted to, not when it had been as close as it was to Nationals. She hadn’t wanted any distractions. ‘I hope you ate a doughnut for me,’ she says.

‘I definitely did,’ says Tessa.

There’s another long silence. Kaitlyn doesn’t know why Tessa called. It can’t be about anything really important. Tessa has always respected that Kaitlyn doesn’t want to talk about important things when she’s focused on competing.

Sometimes it doesn’t leave a lot for them _to_ talk about. For a wild moment she’s tempted to ask Tessa what she’s wearing, like she’s seventeen again and trying desperately to make it work long-distance with the girlfriend she left behind in Connecticut.

‘Do you miss me?’ asks Tessa.  Her voice is quiet, and Kaitlyn wonders if it’s maybe a little smaller or if that’s just her imagination. She wonders if Tessa means does she miss _Tessa_ , not Tessa and Scott at Nationals.

She misses sharing with Tessa at competitions when they were younger than they are now, the two of them trying to sleep crammed into one of their narrow beds for comfort and having to give up in the end because there just wasn’t enough space. She misses Tessa spreading her out on larger beds, later, and fucking into her with her fingers and tongue, covering Kaitlyn with her whole body just because that’s what she wanted. She misses seeing Tessa every day like she could on tour. She misses going out for drinks with the cast and coming back with just Tessa, and Tessa tracing Kaitlyn’s lips with one fingertip, carefully, before tilting her head up to kiss her. She misses Tessa sitting with her head against her shoulder, perfectly still so as not to mess up her competition hair, both of them scrolling through their phones. She misses Tessa’s hugs.

She misses Tessa at Nationals in some ways, and not at all in others. Kaitlyn wants to win, and winning was never an option when Tessa and Scott were there.

‘No,’ she says, breezily.

Tessa laughs. Kaitlyn’s day is already magical, but the bell of Tessa’s laugh could almost tip it over into perfect.

‘Thank you,’ says Tessa. ‘I think I needed that.’

Kaitlyn’s glad. Tessa sounds happier, lighter. She’s glad she called. ‘I’ll call when we’re back home,’ she promises.

‘I’d like that,’ says Tessa. ‘Good luck tomorrow, yeah? You guys are going to be so great.’

‘Thanks,’ says Kaitlyn. ‘Just—thank you.’

She means for working with them on the tango romantica all through the autumn, and for calling tonight, and for—everything.

‘Yeah,’ says Tessa, softly.

Tessa hangs up first. Kaitlyn doesn’t pick up her book again; she doesn’t want the distraction. She stays curled in the armchair, blanket around her shoulders, until the alarm on her phone dings softly to tell her it’s time for bed.

//   

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the poem of the same name by Mary Oliver.
> 
> Yell with me on Twitter about Tessa Virtue eating doughnuts: @/mfparaph


End file.
